And inextinguishable nature, speak:

Each much deposes; hear them in their turn.
Thy soul, how passionately fond of fame!
How anxious that fond passion to conceal!
We blush, detected in designs on praise,
Though for best deeds, and from the best of men;
And why? because immortal. Art divine
Has made the body tutor to the soul;

Heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow,
Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there
Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim
Which stoops to court a character from man;
While o'er us, in tremendous judgment, sit
Far more than man, with endless praise and blame.
Ambition's boundless appetite ontspeaks
The verdict of its shame. When souls take fire
At high presumptions of their own desert,
One age is poor applause: the mighty shout,
The thunder by the living few begun,

Late Time must echo, worlds unborn resound.
We wish our names eternally to live;

[thought,
Wild dream! which ne'er had haunted human
Had not our natures been eternal too.
Instinct points out an interest in hereafter,
But our blind reason sees not where it lies,
Or, seeing, gives the substance for the shade.
Fame is the shade of Immortality,

And in itself a shadow; soon as caught
Contemn'd, it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.
Consult the' ambitious, 'tis ambition's cure.
And is this all?' cried Cæsar, at his height,
Disgusted. This third proof Ambition brings
Of immortality. The first in fame,

Observe him near, your envy will abate:
Sham'd at the disproportion vast between
The passion and the purchase, he will sigh
At such success, and blush at his renown.
And why? because far richer prize invites
His heart; far more illustrious glory calls;
It calls in whispers, yet the deafest hear.

And can Ambition a fourth proof supply?
It can, and stronger than the former three,
Yet quite o'erlook'd by some reputed wise.
Though disappointments in ambition pain,
And though success disgusts, yet still, Lorenzo!
In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts,
By Nature planted for the noblest ends.
Absurd the fam'd advice to Pyrrhus giv'n,

More prais'd than ponder'd; specious, but unsound:
Sooner that hero's sword the world had quell'd,
Than reason his ambition. Man must soar;
An obstinate activity within,

An insuppressive spring, will toss him up
In spite of Fortune's load. Not kings alone,
Each villager has his ambition too :

No sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave.
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,
Echo the proud Assyrian in their hearts,
And cry, Behold the wonders of my might!'
And why? because immortal as their lord;
And souls immortal must for ever heave
At something great; the glitter or the gold;
The praise of mortals, or the praise of Heav'n!
Nor absolutely vain is human praise,

When buman is supported by divine.
I'll introduce Lorenzo to himself;

Pleasure and Pride (bad masters!) share our hearts.

As love of pleasure is ordain'd to guard
And feed our bodies, and extend our race;
The love of praise is planted to protect
And propagate-the glories of the mind!
What is it, but the love of praise, inspires,
Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts,
Earth's happiness? from that the delicate,
The grand, the marvellous, of civil life,
Want and convenience, under-workers, lay
The basis on which love of glory builds.
Nor is thy life, O Virtue! less in debt
To praise, thy secret-stimulating friend.
Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!
Pride made the virtues of the Pagan world.
Praise is the salt that seasons right to man,
And whets his appetite for moral good.
Thirst of applause is Virtue's second guard,
Reason her first; but reason wants an aid;
Our private reason is a flatterer;

Thirst of applause calls public judgment in
To poise our own, to keep an even scale,
And give endanger'd Virtue fairer play.

Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still.
Why this so nice construction of our hearts?
These delicate moralities of sense,
This constitutional reserve of aid

To succour Virtue when our reason fails,
If virtue, kept alive by care and toil,
And oft the mark of injuries on earth,
When labour'd to maturity (its bill

Of disciplines and pains unpaid) must die?
Why freighted rich to dash against a rock?
Were man to perish when most fit to live,
O how mis-spent were all these stratagems,

By skill divine inwoven in our frame?
Where are Heaven's holiness and mercy fled?
Laughs Heaven, at once, at virtue and at man?
If not, why that discourag'd, this destroy'd?-
Thus far Ambition: what says Avarice?
This her chief maxim, which has long been thine :
"The wise and wealthy are the same.'-I grant it.
To store up treasure, with incessant toil,
This is man's province, this his highest praise:
To this great end keen Instinct stings him on :
To guide that instinct, Reason! is thy charge;
'Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies;
But Reason, failing to discharge her trust,
Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,
A blunder follows, and blind Industry,
Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course,
(The course where stakes of more than gold are won)
O'erloading with the cares of distant age
The jaded spirits of the present hour,

Provides for an eternity below.

"Thou shalt not covet,' is a wise command, But bounded to the wealth the sun surveys. Look farther, the command stands quite revers'd, And avarice is a virtue most divine.

Is faith a refuge for our happiness?

Most sure; and is it not for reason too?
Nothing this world unriddles but the next.
Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain?
From inextinguishable life in man:

Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies,
Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt.

Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice;
Yet still their root is immortality:

These its wild growths, so bitter and so base,

Where once they soar'd illustrious, ere seduc'd, By wanton Eve's debauch, to stroll on earth, And set the sublunary world on fire.

But grant their frenzy lasts; their frenzy fails To disappoint one providential end

For which Heaven blew up ardour in our hearts.
Were Reason silent, boundless Passion speaks
A future scene of boundless objects too,
And brings glad tidings of eternal day.
Eternal day! 'tis that enlightens all,
And all, by that enlighten'd, proves it sure.
Consider man as an immortal being,

Intelligible all, and all is great;

A crystalline transparency prevails,

And strikes full lustre through the human sphere: Consider man as mortal, all is dark

And wretched; Reason weeps at the survey.

The learn'd Lorenzo cries, And let her weep; Weak modern Reason: ancient times were wise. Authority, that venerable guide,

Stands on my part; the fam'd Athenian Porch
(And who for wisdom so renown'd as they ?)
Denied this immortality to man.'

I grant it; but affirm, they prov'd it too.
A riddle this!-Have patience; I'll explain.
What noble vanities, what moral flights,
Glittering through their romantic wisdom's page,
Make us, at once, despise them and admire?
Fable is flat to these high-season'd Sires;
They leave the' extravagance of song below.
'Flesh shall not feel, or, feeling, shall enjoy
The dagger or the rack; to them alike
A bed of roses, or the burning bull.'
In men exploding all beyond the grave,